


Until We Settle Our Past

by Devilc



Category: Fast and the Furious Series, The Chronicles of Riddick Series
Genre: AU, Crossover, Gen, mentions of dom/brian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-27
Updated: 2015-06-27
Packaged: 2018-04-06 11:46:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4220478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Devilc/pseuds/Devilc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's after midnight and Riddick's about to enter a speedtuner bar named DT's at the edge of town on a backwater world when two bodies -- standard issue mercs --  go flying out through the front door, followed a split second later by a guy who's a ringer for him, except for the large silver cross around his neck, and his eyes.  They're hard and black and filled with a flat rage and in that instant they meet his they say to him, "Gimme a moment, 'cause we got business when I'm done here."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Man Walks Into a Bar

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zen/gifts).



> This began as a post in my dreamwidth, a what if ... Because what if these two very different BAMFs crossed paths.
> 
> Thank you to Ixchel55 for her beta. And thank you to everybody whose comments kept me going
> 
> The Fast and The Furious series and The Chronicles of Riddick series are copyright their respective owners. I own only this combination of the two, and this fair use work of whatiffery is a labor of love, not lucre.
> 
> With love for my dear ~~sweet~~ sasstastic and snarktacular Zen.

> "There is no future until we settle our past."  
>  \- Shirah-  
>  _The Chronicles of Riddick_  
> 

\-----

It's after midnight and Riddick's about to enter a speedtuner bar named DT's at the edge of town on a backwater world when two bodies -- standard issue mercs -- go flying out through the front door, followed a split second later by a guy who's a ringer for him, except for the large silver cross around his neck, and his eyes. They're hard and black and filled with a flat rage and in that instant they meet his they say to him, "Gimme a moment, 'cause we got business when I'm done here."

His Ringer gives the two standard issue mercs a few final kicks to the ribs while yelling at them that they got the wrong guy, look at his eyes, do they look shined? No. No they do not. And that it's fucking embarrassing being the target of two chumps who couldn't track a muddy dog across a clean floor. 

Meanwhile a small crew of folks has gathered at the door. Riddick sizes them up: they were once various odds and ends, but now they're something _more_. By the way that they watch him, Riddick can tell that they're the Ringer's, heart and soul. ~~His tribe. His clan.~~ His pack.

The Ringer's hands move like lightning, darting into the pockets and pouches of the mercs, stripping them of any weapons and anything of value. "To pay for the damages to my bar," he snarls. "Now, go on, get out of here! Get!" He aims one last boot to the ass as they stumble away, right past Riddick, heads down. He laughs inside as they go by. Couldn't track a muddy dog across a clean floor, indeed.

Those jet colored eyes lock with his now, old, and knowing, and unfazed by the way the lone streetlight and neon lights of the bar give Riddick's an otherworldly glow. He sees a sort of amusement in their depths.

"Richard Riddick, I take it?" Low and slightly gravelly. Other than his odd, clipped accent, it's like listening to himself speak.

Riddick smiles, "The one and only."

If the sound of Riddick's voice startles him, he doesn't show it. The Ringer extends his hand, "Dominic Toretto." 

Riddick shakes it and glances up at the ancient Earth vehicle mounted next to the DT's sign. It's hulking, and muscular, and yet it looks coiled, like it could spring into action at a moment's notice. Like Toretto. Like him. "I've heard about this place." He glances over at the man next to him. "About you too."

Toretto laughs, "And you've been nothing but sand in my crankcase since I drove through a weird flash of light a few years back." A skip beat later he adds, "Why don't you come inside? You can have any beer you want -- as long as it's a Corona."

~oo(0)oo~

They push through the front door. It's dark enough inside to not hurt his eyes, but bright enough that they render it like high noon. A pulsing beat of electronic music plays, loud enough to be heard, but not so loud people have to shout to be heard.

He sweeps the room with his eyes. It's after midnight on a weekday … the only people here are Toretto's pack, or a few hard core regulars. Young people mostly -- they're the only ones with the time and money for speedtuning -- but Riddick picks out a few people closer to his age. This isn't the first time they've seen bounty hunters bounced out. Most of them have turned back to whatever they were doing before the fight broke out. 

Two actual pool tables -- now there's an old school game -- and a dart board, a real one, not electronic. A few people are taking turns on the tiersanvosins wheel. The rest is posters of racers, land speeders, ripwings, engines, tools, parts, schedules for the local test strips … almost all feature an image of a conventionally attractive scantily clad woman. The holoscreens flash pictures of the same. Above the bar, in a place of honor, is a framed ancient poster of an advertisement for the vehicle next to the sign outside. _That must have taken some serious time and bitcoin to track down_ , Riddick thinks.

One of Toretto's pack, an Amazon with her hair pulled back into a severe honey-colored braid, peels off, steps behind the bar, and starts sweeping up the broken glass. A few others start righting the overturned chairs and tables, while another says something about fetching the mop and bucket.

Riddick draws a deep breath, cataloging the scents. Beer, whiskey, rum, sengane, even something that smells like moonshine. Warm bodies. Something lemon-scented used for cleaning.

Toretto lays a hand on his shoulder as he guides them to a booth in the back. "Fescue," he calls over his shoulder to a tall, lanky guy, "bring us a couple of Coronas."

~oo(0)oo~

Corona turns out to be a light, slightly bitter beer, served and drunk with a twist of lime. It's oddly refreshing. Riddick rarely drinks; in his experience anything that dulls the senses or reflexes is a liability. He takes another swallow, liking the way the lime makes it go down clean. The label on the bottle tells him it was bottled locally under the auspices of DT's Brewing Company.

Toretto's pack works efficiently, doing their tasks, but also keeping a weather eye on their leader, ready to snap to, or step in if needed.

The booth smells like Toretto, it's been soaked deep into the upholstery. Riddick doubts any of the locals would approach Toretto without having reason, but it's good to see his people know what to do without having to be told, or made to do it.

Toretto's voice redirects his focus. He rubs a thumb over the label on the bottle as he says, "'Course, it's not the real thing. But it's as close as I'm ever going to get." There's a wistfulness to the words.

Riddick doesn't have a reply for that. He flicks his eyes over the pack, sizing them up. The three Pups are at work on cleanup detail. The waitress is the Den Mother. Skinny Fescue with his mis-matched eyes is the Peacemaker. The woman behind the bar is Toretto's Muscle. He sifts through the room again and still doesn't see the Second or the Head Bitch. "Quite a ... crew you've assembled."

"Yeah, motley as they are." Toretto takes another swig of his beer. "Like they say, home is the place that when you get there, they have to take you in."

 _I wouldn't know._ Riddick doesn't say the words.

They finish their beers quietly, both of them watching the people in the bar around them. It doesn't feel tense, the not talking. Toretto doesn't have the need to fill the air with chatter, and Riddick likes that. What he can't get a bead on is why he feels almost comfortable sitting next to a man he met just out of curiosity, and why he's still here, given that they're not conducting business.

Fescue and the Den Mother, whose nametag says Tiasera, come over with a basket of fries -- made from actual potatoes, fresh from the fryer -- and a large plate of chicken wings, glazed with volcanic orange hot sauce. Tiasera also puts a small bowl of carrot and celery sticks in front of Toretto and growls, "Eat your vegetables." She flashes an ear to ear smile at Riddick as she pulls a bottle of Tabasco sauce out of her apron and sets it in front of him. "In case you want some extra spice."

If was just her and him alone in the booth, he would have said, "Oh, I always like extra spice." Instead he replies, "Thanks."

They both dig in and Riddick can't stop the ear to ear grin as he eats. It's simple bar food, but it's _fresh_ , and the Corona and lime dampens the flames in his mouth. When Toretto catches him licking his fingers, Riddick shrugs and says, "It's good, Toretto." 

"Call me Dom. And if I put my name on it, you can bet your ass it's good."

~oo(0)oo~

Dom's house is a "we made it up as we went along" affair tucked in a fenced in lot behind a garage -- Toretto Precision Tuning. Tiasera hands him a blanket and a pillow and gets him settled on a couch in a room built out of a shipping container.

After a few minutes of goodnights and letting Dom know what they plan to do the next day, the pack files away. Riddick can see it in their eyes. They know who he is. They probably hopped on the net and looked him up the day the first bounty hunter landed on their doorstep. They know who he is and the Pups are more curious than afraid, while Fescue, Tiasera, Odetta (the Amazon) and Dom are withholding further judgement.

"Which slam did they send you to?" The words are out of Riddick's mouth before he can stop them, and he has no idea where they came from.

Dom crosses his arms and stares down at him for a long moment before gritting out, "Lompoc." A moment later he adds, "They tried to send me back, but I never made it there."

Riddick nods.

"Bathroom's the second door on the right." Dom grins a little evilly as he continues, "The first door is Odetta's. Open it uninvited and you will draw back a bloody stub." He points to the left through an open doorway and says, "Help yourself to anything you want in the kitchen except for Tiasera's icecream bars. Take one of those and you'll discover that hell hath no fury like a woman. See you tomorrow."

Riddick settles back on the couch and listens to the sounds the house and its occupants make as everybody climbs into their beds. He's in the den, surrounded by the pack, and the alpha's directly overhead.

They aren't afraid of him because, one way or another, they are hard people from hard places and they've learned how to spot somebody who actively means them harm. They have to. And, for all of Dom's kind of charisma and (guarded) warmth, his eyes don't lie. Rage lives there, waiting for the moment it's needed and let loose.

He draws in a deep breath and knows -- even without one of those flashes of the Fortelling he sometimes gets -- nobody in this house will come for him in the night, and all of his gear will stay in the bag he set next to the coffee table. 

For the first time in a very long time, since Fry, since Jack, Riddick is with people who don't grind on him, and he's about to sleep on their fucking couch. Because he's a house guest. Like an ordinary person.

He stretches out on the couch. The pillow, the blankets, the cushions, they smell _right_. Lived in. Not institutional. Not _Other_.

He shows up and they feed him and take him back to the den and now …? Dom's voice echoes in his head, " … they have to take you in."

He chuckles at the notion.

Fuck no, he's not staying. He's not a speedtuner, that's for certain. He's not sure his particular brand of chaos will be welcome here for more than a lunar cycle at a time. But he knows (knows to his bones) that there will always, _always_ be a place for him here when he comes.

~oo(0)oo~

One night turns into two. Then a week. 

Nighttimes, he climbs onto the roof of the bar, feels the pulse of the music beneath his feet, watches the customers and speeders come and go. He ducks in shortly before closing.

During the day he climbs into the rafters of the garage and watches as they work on the speeders and scramblers, listens as they debate the merits of various mods, or shoot the shit -- and sometimes, they're the same thing -- while they cobble together some incredibly creative solutions to engineering problems.

(He's in awe the day they figure out a way to fix the transaxle on an ancient utility vehicle that should've been sent to the scrap yard long ago. The prospectors it belongs to almost sob in relief. Nobody else in town would touch the damn thing, even though they had the bitcoin to pay.)

There's a room inside the garage with a heavy-duty, military grade reinforced rolling door. A garage inside the garage.

"That's Dom's," Fescue says when he sees Riddick studying it.

Riddick could get through the padlock on the door without too much trouble. From what he can see, the shank is too thick for anything but an industrial bolt cutter. It's got disk tumblers, so he can't knock key it, and picking that kind of lock takes a hell of a lot of time, but a plasma cutter would get him through the shank. A preliminary scan of the walls tells him nothing except that there's a layer of lead behind the painted cinderblocks and cement, so any further security is hidden. Through the layer of dust on the roof, he can see a criss-cross of razorwire. 

He calls down to Fescue, "What's he got in there?"

Fescue's mouth twists into a crooked, dimpled smile. "His stuff." Deadpan. Then, quietly, "An antique Earth car and some mementos. He'll take you in there someday when he's ready and in the mood."

~oo(0)oo~

The night before Riddick leaves, Dom passes three sheets of heavy plywood up to him to make a platform. A thin, rolled up camping mattress follows, along with two blankets and a pillow. Last of all, Dom bolts a rope ladder to the edge. "Not that you have any problems climbing up here without one, but better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it." He sits back and smiles. "I was wondering what we were going to do for your room. I'm glad you turned out to be so cheap and easy." Dom wipes a hand over his scalp and studies the space. "And you've got the biggest room."

"I'm not staying."

Dom studies his face for a long moment, almost making Riddick glad he's got his goggles on. Almost. "You'll be back."

"You sound so certain." Most people turn tail and run when he speaks like that.

Dom, on the other hand, tilts his head one way and then the other. "A day, a month, a year. The neighborhood cat always swings by." He slaps a key down and slides it across the board and then he's down the ladder, across the floor, and out the door with barely a backwards glance.

~oo(0)oo~

Riddick slips out just before dawn, locking the door behind him. For a moment he thinks about hotwiring a speeder, but the law's not hot on his tail, he doesn't have a chit for that kind of bitcoin, and he doesn't believe in shitting on people who've done right by him. He turns and heads for the hills in a loping run.

~oo(0)oo~

Shirah comes to him one moonless night as he's lying on a mesa and watching the stars wheel slowly above him, drifting in that place just on the edge of sleep.

"You keep what you kill," she says.

"So they tell me," he murmurs in reply. It's been a long time since he's seen her, and as always, he wonders if she exists outside of his mind, and, if not, is she something his subconscious dreamed up because he needed someone like her to exist, or, is she some sort of Furyan ancestral memory personified?

"And yet, they have kept what is yours. Finish what you started."

 _But what did I start?_ He wonders.

With a sweep of her arm she shows him a kaleidoscope of images. Necromonger vs. Necromonger. It seems a civil war is brewing.

" _Finish what you started._ " She insists.

It's amazing the things he starts by simply refusing to lay down and die. Riddick sucks in a deep breath of the cool night air. Earth. Grass. Leaves. Also, the first promise of Autumn. And beyond that, Winter. 

This is a mostly temperate planet and he is a man made for extremes.

It takes him three days to make it to the nearest town. From there he catches out on a convoy to the nearest spaceport, and from there, it's almost too easy to slip aboard a freighter ferrying weapons towards the rumors of turbulence on the outer rim.

He spends half a standard cycle in cryosleep.

Shirah barely gives him a moment's peace as she shows him the way.

~oo(0)oo~

In the ruins of a freshly devastated world, he slips aboard the largest ship and slays all the Quasi-Dead before they can raise the alarm. Next, he takes out the commander and a random selection of the ranking officers.

He's out with the trash before they realize what has happened.

~oo(0)oo~

For the next standard cycle he becomes the ghost returned to haunt the mostly-living.

~oo(0)oo~

He takes Lord and Lady Vaako somewhere in the middle.

Krone he saves for last.

He doesn't have to plant any evidence to get the Necromongers to turn on each other. They all assume _someone_ is coming for them, because someone is _always_ coming for those at the apex -- it's keep-what-you-kill the nature of being a Necromonger. 

Yet, despite all of their paranoia and suspicion, none of them see _him_ coming.

~oo(0)oo~

At the edge of the Threshold, he boldly strides into Krone's grand hall while Krone's holding court with the largest faction of what's left of the Necromongers. Riddick unleashes the full Fury of the Race that Died on all who are present, scouring them from the 'verse.

Krone's Quasi-Dead come next. They rush into his mind and then they try to flee from what they find inside. Riddick grabs them, pulls them down and under, pours himself into them until they are consumed by it. They scream and scream as they die, their minds immolated, their sentience annihilated by the searing intensity of his will, but there is no one to hear them.

He doesn't need a Foretelling to know what will happen next. The remnants of the Necromongers will tear themselves to shreds trying to claim the Lord Marshall's throne. In less than a decade they will be little more than a fringe cult of fanatics. 

As they always should have been.

He uses the blood of one of the Quasi-Dead to write a short note on the dais directly in front of the throne:

_Over my dead body -- Riddick._


	2. Which Puzzle Piece Fell Out of Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is a line from Them Crooked Vulture's "Dead End Friends":  
>   
>  _I follow the road at night,_  
>  just hoping to find  
> which puzzle piece fell out of me.

He keeps tradition alive and returns to DT's on the night of the Harvest Moon, but it's closed. 

"See you at Speed Tribes" says a handwritten note on the door. Riddick feels slightly let down and mulls it over as he heads towards Toretto's compound. He finally decides it's because wants to see Dom and the Pack again, but why?

Unlocking the door to the garage, he lets himself in, shinnies up a support pole, and leaps across the rafters until he gets to the platform.

His heart gives a strange lurch when he discovers somebody draped a dust cloth over everything. Riddick drops it to the floor as a subtle way of letting whoever comes in next know that he has returned.

His pillow, sleeping mat, and blanket could use a little freshening up (the smell of dust, metal, and lubricating oil has seeped into their fibers, but it's not overwhelming.) The dust cloth did the job; he doesn't spend the night choking and sneezing.

~oo(0)oo~

Dom and his pack return just before sunrise. Riddick awakens before they've even pulled up. An overwhelming sensation of rage and blood slams into him, snapping him out of a deep and dreamless slumber -- a thing that unsettles him, because he never sleeps _that_ deeply; it's a life or death thing, and here he's fallen into something one step away from cryosleep -- a minute later he hears the sounds of vehicles and footsteps before a key turns in the lock and the door slams up.

"Who's there," Dom bellows. "Show yourself!"

Riddick hears the sound of a shotgun cocking before he can reply. "I am. I'm coming down." He slides his goggles on as protection against the rising sun and drops to the ground inches from the business end of Dom's 12 gauge.

Toretto is covered in blood, already gone dried and rusty, and his eyes are pools of wrath and grief.

Riddick feels something deep inside coil and flex in response. "What happened?"

Dom draws in a deep, shuddering breath, pinches the bridge of his nose, and turns away. He's a man of action bursting to go, intent on executing a plan, but now he's being asked to fight the momentum that's driving him forward, to slow down, stop, and find words.

The words, on the other hand, pour out of Tiasera, who's got one arm slung around the littlest of the Pups, a boy of 14 or so, whose name Riddick thinks is Vinny.

They were robbed at Speed Tribes. Dom has an antique earth vehicle, a 1969 Dodge Charger, which he normally takes out once a year and races on the local test strip. This year, he was talked into taking it to Speed Tribes to put it on display. For the past three cycles, a buyer has been pressuring him, waving a lot of money under his nose, but Dom has always refused. He doesn't need the money.

This year, mercs came to Speed Tribes and took the car. Her cinnamon-brown skin flushes red with rage, and her bright hazel eyes grow agate hard as she continues, "Odetta's in the hospital. They shot her in the shoulder, and she's probably going to lose her eye. Fescue --"

"They killed Fescue." Dom cuts in. He looks like he's about to say something else, but he clenches his mouth shut, his lips becoming a hard line as he clamps down, visibly shaking with emotion.

Riddick feels his mouth pull into something like a smile as he says, "What do you need me to do?" 

_Who do you need me to kill?_ goes unspoken but understood between them.

"Gear up." Dom brushes past, heading for the house.

~oo(0)oo~

Yeah, Officer Friendly and Johnny Law are on the case, but they move at a pace that's two steps behind. Hell, they're probably still figuring out how to get here from Speed Tribes. 

(And Riddick wouldn't be surprised if the Port Authority is in the pocket of whoever did this … if they don't have a private ship of their own.)

Riddick's waiting next to Dom's speeder when he barrels up in fresh clothes. "Come with me. We need to lug some jerry cans."

Jerry cans turn out to be the standard 20 liter plasti-steel containers that Riddick remembers from his days of soldiering. Only these ones don't carry water, but something with an odor both sweet and sharp that makes his nose wrinkle.

"High octane gasoline." Dom says.

"That means nothing to me."

"For the Charger. Her engine burns gasoline." A moment later he adds, "I have it custom made by a local chemical engineering company. Once a year, I take her out and put her through her paces."

Though a modern fuel cell motor would be far more efficient, Riddick knows better than to ask Dom why he hasn't put one in his antique vehicle.

Tiasera strides over, her dark curls clipped back, two machine pistols in a harness. She slips a com link over her ear. "Okay, Dom, tell us the plan."

"You're staying --"

"Absifragglutely not. Whatever you and Riddick are planning to do, Mickey, Da'linda and me are coming with. Vinny's staying behind to keep an eye on things and check in on Odetta."

Dom's face clouds over. "Riddick and I got this handled."

"Then tell me your plan." She squares up and looks him straight in the eye. "Where are you planning to hit them? On the docks? It's way too crowded for that. We have nothing capable of taking down a private transport unless you plan to hit it with a micro EMP grenade before it takes off, and last I checked, we don't have any of those. So, I'm thinking you're planning to take them on the road before they hit the docks or make it to the nearest dry lakebed."

Dom closes his eyes and runs a hand over his head. "Yes!" he finally roars.

"Riddick," she says, eyes flashing, "he's told us about how he used to do this, back in the day, but the way he describes it, it's a 3 person team, minimum." She fixes Dom with a searing glare. "Unless they were just bullshit tales."

After a long moment Dom visibly lets go and says, "You're right. And no, they weren't just tales. As much as I hate it, you're right." Riddick can almost see the gears whirring in his head as he says, "Here's how we're going to do it. Mickey and Da'linda, you run interference. Each of you gets a pistol and two extra clips. But you only shoot if you get shot at, _capice_?" They both nod. "I will bust your asses if you break that rule. Tia, you'll drive my speeder, and I need you to be as steady as you can. Riddick and I will board the rig from the speeder and take out the driver. We're also going to have to rig a line and get at least one of the jerry cans over --"

"Won't be a problem." Riddick grabs one of the cans and shows how easy it is for him to lift it. "I'm stronger than I look."

"The weight is the least of the problem. It's what's in the can that's volatile if bullets are flying." Pause. "You all follow my lead and do what I tell you, and we can pull this off."

 _Possibly._ Riddick thinks. "How are you tracking them?"

Dom's mouth twists with dark amusement. "Whenever I take the car out for a show, I leave my old cell phone in it. It's useless for making calls, but the old GPS system in it still works for some reason, and it transmits on a frequency that nobody jams, because the current GPS systems use a different frequency."

"It's a legacy," Riddick says, "an old back channel from the earliest days of planetary mapping and positioning. Most people don't know about it because there's a hard coded data limit, making it useless for all but very short transmissions, but some machines still use it to talk to each other." At Dom's questioning look he adds, "I'm a hard core pilot. Knowing about this old system has gotten me out of more than one tight spot."

"Okkayyy," Dom says. "I called it on the back channel and it's phoned home." He takes out his holopad. "I know exactly where it is. _Exactly_."

Riddick smiles inside. _Actually, it's give or take 8 meters. I found that out the hard way._ "So, how are we boarding the cargo hauler?"

~oo(0)oo~

Riddick can't contain a joyous whoop of laughter when he hears the rest of the plan. They're going to hit the cargo hauler with grappling hooks and jump on, overpower the driver, stop the hauler, and if they can't get the door unlatched, Dom's got a cutting torch on his tool belt. Then they fuel up the Charger and drive it out.

Riddick loves the plan because it's just as audacious and crazy as anything he's ever done. 

By the way Tiasera and the Pups nod, Riddick realizes it's not the craziest thing Dom's ever done. At his look, Dom says under his breath, "Remind me to tell you about Rio."

They run a quick coms check, talk about their plan one more time, and hit the road.

~oo(0)oo~

The cargo hauler has one escort cruiser. The pups maneuver to pen it in while Riddick and Dom ready their rigs for the grapple and jump. Dom grips his shoulder tightly and says to him, "No killing unless it's life or death. As much as I want these people to die, it's one thing if we're just getting our stuff back, another thing entirely if we leave a dead body behind." His eyes bore in, hard and black as industrial diamonds. "Understand?"

Riddick nods. _I never killed anybody who didn't need it._ he thinks. _Though I wish I could've killed a few of them more than once._

~oo(0)oo~

Riddick knocks the driver of the cargo hauler out with a strike from the butt end of his knife, but the battle for the cab has damaged the drive control system. "I can open the back hatch," he explains, "But I can't get the hauler turned off -- at this point it's going to take a kill frequency to do that."

"What can you do?" The look in Dom's eye is annoyed, but not panicked. He's got the adrenaline jitters -- they both do -- but the jitters don't have him.

"I can engage the autodrive, but the slowest that will let us go is 30 kilometers."

"Do it!" Dom shouts, already in the act of climbing out the cab's window.

~oo(0)oo~

"Make sure you strap in, because this is going to be a wild ride," Dom says to him just before he puts the second empty jerry can in the trunk. He climbs into the driver's seat and fastens his own harness before sliding the key in and turning it.

The vehicle, which Dom affectionately calls "the Beast" and refers to in feminine terms, rumbles to life in a way that both startles and pleases Riddick. Then Dom hits the accelerator and it _roars_. A moment later, Dom slaps it in gear and she leaps forward, the sheer force of acceleration pinning Riddick into the seat as they rocket out of the back of the cargo hauler and land with a bone-jarring, teeth-rattling _WHAM!!_. The car fishtails and shimmies for a second, but then Dom wrests control, and calls for Tiasera and the Pups to fall in line.

As they leave the cargo hauler in the rearview mirror and pass the trashed remains of the speeder that the Pups forced off the road, Riddick contemplates the roughness of the ride -- he's much more used to speeders -- the tires and the stiff suspension of the Charger seem to let through every imperfection of the road. A road admittedly not designed for this type of vehicle. But … he _likes_ it. There's something very real and visceral about the vibration, the rattles, the bumps, the roar of the wind and the rumble of the engine and it feels _righter_ to Riddick in a way that a speeder (however fast) never has. It's nothing like flying a ship, either. 

"Something's on your mind," Dom says.

Riddick can't stop the smile. "This car scratches an itch I never realized I had."

"That's because she's a 10 second car. She can run a quarter mile from a dead standstill before the stopwatch ticks 11." Dom pauses and adds, "That's a hair over 402 meters."

Riddick thinks about the fact that speeders can do it faster, and that's nothing compared to achieving escape velocity, but there's something brutal and ruthless about the engineering of this 500 year old vehicle -- how this primitive mechanical engine must have to roar and snarl during those 10 seconds -- that appeals to him. _It's the challenge,_ he decides. _The idea of doing it even though it seems damn near impossible._

Tiasera and the Pups fall into formation, Tiasera up front and the Pups in back, and though Dom keeps both hands on the wheel and the needle pegged at a steady 60, Riddick notices that his eyes regularly flick to the mirrors and to the shotgun propped on the seat between them.

Five minutes into the run, Dom says, "I suppose you have questions."

"Yes."

"Fire away."

Riddick thinks for a moment and says, "Have you been back to Earth?"

Dom side eyes him and smiles sadly. "Unfortunately. It's all gone, all the things I remember: the old neighborhood, Echo Park, the Sunset Strip … Los Angeles is just a ghost to me now.

"I tried accessing the old records to track down what happened to my family and friends but what war and time didn't erase … well, given who we were, _what_ we were? We scattered all over the globe, and we worked to stay under the radar. The records that weren't lost, they never existed to begin with." He pauses and gathers himself. "The only person I ever found was Fescue."

Dom stops, but Riddick senses there's more coming, so he waits. 

"Fescue is descended from Luke Hobbs -- the guy they sent to run me in after my family and friends busted me out of the prison transport. So, it's not like he was my closest friend, but he was a good man. He had a _code_." Dom laughs, "He was a _mountain_ of man. Head and shoulders and 100 pounds of muscle on me. I really wish he could've met Fescue -- skinny string bean of a descendant."

 _A man with a code. I understand that_. "Did Fescue know?"

"Yeah, I told him all about Hobbs." Dom's expression darkens. "Kid was in a real tight spot when I found him and took him under my wing. His mom and dad died of some bug that had just gone through and he was 16 with no family, no close friends." Dom shakes his head. "Let me tell you, that fucking sucked -- having to get all of my immunizations. Can't stand doctors with needles, even if they're tiny."

"I'm not too fond of them myself," Riddick states. "The bar, the brewery, the garage? Where'd you get the money?"

Dom cackles. "A slice of advice. If you ever go through a wormhole and end up 500 years in the future on the other side of the galaxy? Do it with a pocket full of state quarters and a brick of the last $100 bills the US Mint printed on actual rag-fiber paper. The quarters alone were worth over 1000 bitcoin a piece, and that brick of bills netted me close to a million. Oh, and that was weird too -- finding out that the money that everybody uses isn't dollars, but bitcoin, 'cause it was a fringe currency when I left Earth."

Riddick smiles and nods. _Occasionally people have dumb luck. Mine seems to go the opposite way, but fuck Fate._ "How'd you escape from them?"

"From the prison transport to Lompoc? I just told you, my family --"

Riddick leans in and drops his voice. "From the bureaucrats on the core worlds. You're what they'd call a 'scientific anomaly.' How come you're not in a cage being studied?"

Dom shakes his head. "After six months? I'm just not that interesting. A flash of light -- I drove through it, but I have no idea what caused it, and none of their tests helped them figure it out. I had some unique gut bacteria until I got an epic case of Montezuma's Revenge about a week after getting here." He shrugs. "They cut me loose after they got what interests them. I get contacted by academics every now and again who want help with slang from my time, or want to know how we did things, or what do I remember about certain famous dates that now mean almost nothing to anybody else." He pauses. "I did get interviewed for about three months straight by a team from Quintessa."

" _Quintessa?!_ " Riddick snarls. 

"Yeah? Something I should know?"

Riddick's mouth tightens as he searches for the words. "I had some dealings with one of them once. They _always_ have an agenda."

"Well, good luck to them then. Pretty much all my records were destroyed when things went to shit on Earth. Here and now, I'm Dominic Toretto, man who fell through a wormhole. Not Dominic Toretto, convicted felon and fugitive from justice. I did eventually get a pardon from the US government in exchange for some favors, but I imagine Rio still wants me for what me and my team pulled down there." He glances over at Riddick, smiles at memories, and says, "Law Enforcement tends to hold grudges."

 _Don't I damn well know it._ Riddick has other questions, but it's good to let things settle. His brain needs to chew on this for awhile. The kilometers click by, and as they hit the outskirts of town, he says to Dom, "I know you got questions about me. Why haven't you asked?"

Dom snorts before his eyes flick over and lock with Riddick's. "Because I know to mind my own business," he growls in reply. "Besides, I pegged a long while back that all the stuff I heard and read about you was only half of the story -- told by somebody with an axe to grind."

~oo(0)oo~

To Riddick's surprise, they don't take the Beast back to the garage, they drive it to the brewery.

Correction. They drive it _back_ to the brewery, to the hidden garage in the warehouse where Dom keeps his supply of hops. It's brilliant. Nobody's looking for him to stash his vehicle there, the hops will mask any distinctive smells associated with the Beast, it's clean and dry, _plus_ the brewery's got round the clock security, because somebody's always there to keep an eye on the fermentation and the giant tanks full of slowly cooking mash.

Honestly, before this Riddick had no idea where beer came from. Oh, he knows that people brew it, but he has never given the matter much thought beyond how to get the bottle open. 

_But if Dom keeps the Beast here … then what's back at the garage?_ Riddick can wait. He's good at waiting.

Next on Dom's agenda is a visit to Odetta. She's cranky and itching to get sprung from the hospital, but Dom lays down the law. She's going to keep her ass in that bed for as long as the doctor says so, and if she gets any bright ideas about signing herself out early, she'll be scrubbing toilets with a toothbrush for the next month. Tiasera promises to bring her some home cooking. Mickey stays behind. Both of them promise not to give any statements to the law without calling Dom first or having Dom's lawyer in the room.

A trip to the basement confirms that Fescue's body hasn't even gotten to the morgue yet. "Probably won't for another couple hours," Dom grumbles, visibly seething. "And then they won't release it for another day or two."

There's nothing left to do at this point but go back to the compound. 

They're all tired, dirty and hungry. Dom intercepts Riddick just before he goes into the bathroom and hands him a fresh set of clothes, heavy dungarees broken in enough to be comfortable, but still with plenty of wear left in them, a black shirt, a fresh pair of skivvies, socks. "No offense, but your clothes are pretty ripe." Tiasera calls out from the kitchen and tells him to leave his dirty clothes outside the door so they can get added to the wash.

It's so … domestic. Riddick tumbles it over and over in his mind as he soaps up and lets the warm water from the shower sluice the grit and grime of hard travel off of his body. He hasn't had anything but PTAs, scrub-downs in sinks, or dips in open water in … he gives up on trying to piece it all together. These clothes haven't seen the inside of a washing machine, ever.

Dom's things fit him like a glove.

They gather 'round the kitchen table and in heavy silence they eat something that Dom calls Huevos Rancheros: fried eggs, beans, and tortillas topped with a spicy red salsa that Tiasera made fresh. All foods that he's eaten before, but never in a combination like this. It's hearty, and filling, and Riddick, who seldom thinks of food as anything beyond necessary fuel to keep going, figures it's the sort of food that says "home" to Dom and the pack.

When they're done eating, Riddick lays it out. "You're one step ahead of the law right now, and you've got it sewn up pretty good, but it's better if I'm not here when they come."

Dom nods. The look on his face is still angry, tired, and hollow somehow. Then a little of the darkness lifts as he says, "Come with me to the garage. I got something I want to show you."

~oo(0)oo~

The inner garage houses a vehicle that Dom informs him is a 1994 Toyota Supra, "a ten minute car", meaning a work in progress. "I rebuilt one of these once, with my friend Brian," The slightest pause before the word 'friend' makes Riddick's ears prick up. A second later, Dom continues, "Letty was my wife and I loved her, but Brian was the other half of my soul." 

He doesn't have to say any more than that, Riddick can see it in his eyes.

There are pictures on the wall (mostly the size of the palm of Riddick's hand) that Dom tells him he had specially printed from his old cell phone. No mean feat, because connectors and data standards have changed so much. Also, the printing itself. Most people keep their pictures on their hololinks and holopads, or, if they're going to hang them in the house or something, it's done with holoframes. But he understands why Dom would do it this way … it's what people did during his time on Earth, and they are here and touchable in a way that pixels in a holo are not.

The words come out of Dom, not in a torrent, but in bits and pieces, escapees from a jam up. Brian, Letty, Mia, (Dom's younger sister and Brian's wife), Jack (Dom's nephew), Vince, Leon, Jesse, Tej, Rome, Han, Gisele, Leo & Santos ("always together, those two"), Elena, and Luke Hobbs.

Riddick laughs and laughs at the story of the Rio heist, because yes, the Law and crooked cops do have a long memory, but also, because the sheer audacity of it warms something deep in him. He cannot help but love an act that was as much about pantsing one's enemies as it was about ripping them off.

Riddick has only had two people in his life who would have done for him this way, Fry and Jack, and they're both dead because of him. Finding them? Crazy luck. He'll find a brand new ripwing left unattended with the initial start code on the seat before that happens again. But somehow, Dom surrounds himself with people like that and pulls them in, whether they realize it or not, whether they want it or not. What they did today, getting that Charger back … it's so much more than Dom getting a piece of property back, getting a _thing_ back. It's about Fescue not having died in vain, and Odetta's efforts not be for nothing.

Riddick laughs again on the inside as it dawns on him. He just found that ripwing, in a manner of speaking. He's become one of Dom's. He vows that while he'll do for Dom and the pack, he will move the heavens before they die for him. Fry and Jack are two too many.

He grabs his gear from out of the rafters and slips out the back when Tiasera calls from the house to say that the local constables are approaching. He figures he'll pick up his wash next time he drops in.


	3. The first morning of creation wrote what the last dawn of reckoning shall read

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this chapter comes from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

Shirah comes to him in the night. He's squatting in an abandoned trailer several kilometers outside of town. He doesn't let her get the first word in. "You usually wait until I'm in the outback before you come calling." 

"This isn't your home."

"Says _you_." He loads that last word. "Because Furya, which you still haven't gotten me to yet? It's just a _word_ to me. An idea of a place."

"It's real." Her voice is sad.

"Yeah, and there's Necromonger Obelisks all over it. Has to be. I know how they operate." Riddick does nothing to keep the bitterness out of his voice. "I don't feel the need to go and look at them." _Or at the ruins of cities, or at bones bleaching away beneath the sky._

She frowns at him. "What then?"

He crosses his arms. "I have ideas about where to start digging to find the answers I'm looking for."

"And where is that?"

He glares at her and says, "You can reach out and touch me when I get there."

Shirah's voice turns condescending. "Very well then. But I still think you should go to --"

And with that? He's had it with her. Yes, she has helped him. Yes, she has saved his life many times. Yes, she awakened his full potential as an Alpha Furyan … but what she's given him has always been the bits and pieces she chooses. He sees it now: she's got a plan, and he's done being a part of it.

"You need to get out of my mind," Riddick hisses at her. "Because I know you're not on Furya any more than I am, _and you never have been_." Rage shakes his bones. Reaching, feeling something rising in him, he … shoves her out. He can feel her probing, trying to get in. He projects the image of the dying Quasi-Dead to let her know what awaits her if she keeps trying to enter where she's not wanted.

It's not that he wants to go to Quintessa, because the meddling of Elementals in their quest to keep the galaxy balanced has done as much harm as it has good. One way or another, his entire life has been shaped by their plans and their "good" intentions for civilization. If not for them, he would have had a completely different life: family, a society, others like him. Somebody would have known what to do with him, guided him into adulthood, and taught him how to be an Alpha Furyan. He would have a people with a history, a culture. Instead he got a life of foster homes, group homes, drill sergeants, mercs, grifters, slams, and bitter rage.

On the other hand, because of their meddling and their "studies", the archives on Quintessa hold vast amounts of data; they are the best bet for the answers he seeks.

But before he goes there, he's got another question that needs answering. He catches out on a road-train hauling a load of ore to the spaceport the locals call Gastown, and from there he makes a few discreet inquiries about his quarry.

~oo(0)oo~

Riddick waits outside of the "Lipstick Lounge" in the sheeting down rain until shortly after last call when Dahl emerges, arm slung around an attractive brunette with curves that go on for days. Oh, the things he'd like to do with _her_ … both of them really. And that's not even taking into account the things he'd enjoy being invited to watch them do to each other.

He steps out of the shadows three paces in front of them. "Hello, Dahl," he purrs, having fun with the fact that she can't tell if he called her Dahl or Doll. She is both, after all.

"Who's _this_?" says Dahl's date, stepping forward. _Oh, she's a firecracker._

Riddick grins down at her. "I'm the cockblock."

Dahl gives an epic eyeroll and groans. "What are _you_ doing here?"

"I need to talk to Boss Johns," Riddick says, matter of factly. "I figured it was best if I didn't just straight up ring his bell in the middle of the night. Besides, he leans in and leers, "all things considered, I'd rather ring your bell -- hers too."

Dahl slaps him, hard. Just like he knew she would. "Yeah, next December 32nd."

He laughs, "That's a non-standard month, but I get you. It just so happens that my calendar's booked that day. How does February 30th look for you?"

She laughs and shakes her head.

Quietly, just audible over the sound of the water pouring down, he says, "Call Johns, he's going to want to hear what I have to say, and then you two can get on your merry way."

"Oh, how _kind_ of you." Sarcasm drips off of the Firecracker's words.

Riddick decides to play. "Well, unless, you _want_ an audience? One who's willing to participate …." He shrugs.

Dahl cuts in and blocks the Firecracker's slap. "Not even in your wettest dreams, Riddick." She takes out her hololink and makes the call. "I can't even guarantee he'll pick up at this hour."

~oo(0)oo~

"This better be good," a sleep frazzled Johns grumbles, scrubbing blearily at his eyes.

Riddick takes the hololink from Dahl's outstretched hand and says, "Oh, it _is_."

Johns snaps to instant wakefulness. "Riddick! What --?"

"I got something for you," Riddick says, silk smooth, "and you're going to like it, but it's a strictly this for that trade. My coordinates coming through?" Johns nods. "Good. There's an all-night diner about three blocks south of here. See you in 30 minutes. Come alone."

"And what is it you think I have to trade?" Johns asks as he pulls a shirt over his head.

Riddick smiles. "Information. The kind you just didn't know you had. Yet." Riddick hangs up the call and hands the hololink back to Dahl. "I figure that you and Miss Right Now have an hour, maybe two, before the bossman calls and tells you to gear up, so I wouldn't dawdle."

Dahl groans and rolls her eyes again.

Riddick laughs and shrugs. "Come a little closer and I'll whisper something in your ear that's going to make you really wet." She steps in and he says, "You're going to bag a serial rapist. One with a thing for teenaged girls."

"Ohhhh," she mock coos back in his ear, "you really do know how to sweet talk a lady. Her voice shifts to an icy hiss. "But if you ever threaten to cockblock me again …." Riddick feels a tapping against his thigh and looks down to see a short blade with a serrated edge a flick of the wrist from his femoral artery. Her eyes lock with his, "It's the artery if I'm in a good mood," she says, "something else entirely if I'm not."

The laughter rumbles up from deep inside, and Riddick throws his head back to let it come barreling out. He claps his hands on Dahl's shoulders. "Woman, if for some strange reason you ever decide to hop the fence, look me up."

"What makes you think I haven't already tried what's over there?"

He holds her gaze for a long moment and says, softly, "Because a woman like you doesn't fool around with maybes and what other people think." His eyes glance over at the Firecracker. "She knows what she wants and she guns for it."

She grins back at him, sharp and wicked, "Just for that, I'll let you smack my ass good bye."

"I'll pass." He looks over at Dahl's visibly stewing date, "She'd give me a bloody stub if I did."

~oo(0)oo~

He sits down opposite of Johns in the all-night cafe and motions the waitress over for a cup of coffee.

Johns studies him over the rim of his cup. "You called me out here. What is it?"

Riddick rattles off the name. "The bounty on him's over a million. I saw him on-world less than two standard days ago."

Johns raises an eyebrow. "I know you wouldn't shit me over something like that, so what do you want?"

"Dominic Toretto," Riddick replies. John blinks in surprised recognition. "I can see that you know that name, so tell me, why do none of the big time mercs like go after him? Why is it always the low-rent stringers?"

Johns empties his cup and motions to the waitress for a refill. "Because they're sloppy," he says after she's poured and left. "That's not a name I expected to hear you say."

"I met him. He's my ringer."

The look in Johns' eyes says _And he still lives._ "If you're not paying attention, he's your ringer. " He shrugs.

Riddick dumps creamer into his cup -- through his goggles the color looks washed out -- and studies the eddies and whorls. The silence stretches out between them until Johns gives a heavy sigh.

"You're actually more alike than you think. It's not just a simple case of looks. How much schooling about genetics did you get?"

Riddick cocks his head. "Enough."

"The low rent organizations do a very basic DNA match." Johns pulls out his holopad and punches something into it before sliding it across the table. Toretto's on the left, you're on the right."

Riddick studies it. "That's not _that_ close." He runs a hand over his head, feeling the stubble chafe his fingers.

"There's more," Johns taps at the pad again. "There are genes that are active in Furyans that aren't active in most people, and then there are all things you bred or engineered into yourselves. Toretto either doesn't have those genes, or if he does, they're not active."

Riddick feels anger start to build. "Your point is?"

Johns shoots him a long suffering look. "This. The quick match." He punches some more into the pad, pulling up a different screen. "The quick match database keeps a record of a person's most unique DNA signatures. The big merc houses don't use that one, or if we do, it's a preliminary. We compare the matches to a more complete DNA profile to be sure we've really bagged the right person, especially if we know that there's siblings or twins." He taps the holopad again and flips the screen around, "But you, Riddick, you're a unicorn. You are the only person in the galaxy with this particular Y chromosome. And it's so unique that it's all the quick match database tracks for you. Or," he pauses to let the words sink in, "you _were_ the only person in the galaxy with this chromosome until Dominic Toretto came in. His is a 100% identical match."

Riddick sinks back in the booth. "How?"

Johns shrugs. "If I knew, I'd tell you. We tracked Toretto once. Wanted to make sure that you hadn't bribed or threatened some clerk somewhere to create an alias with an altered DNA profile. A day of overwatch was all it took to determine that he's _really_ not you."

"No eyeshine," Riddick interjects.

Johns nods. "That, and he's got deep roots. People person, too, in his own way. You --"

"Are most definitely not," Riddick says, amused by the idea of himself running a bar, having a garage, hanging around people 24-7, having his own pack.

"That answer your question?"

Riddick nods. _I know what I need to do now, who I need to speak to._

"Good. Now give me the location of that shitball, and we can finish our business here."

Riddick enters the coordinates into the holopad and slides it back across the table. "Like I said, less than two standard days old."

"Didn't think you'd be the kind to give up one of yours," Johns says, his tone flat. It's not a dig, just a matter of fact statement.

Riddick flips up his goggles and over the pain of the lights of the diner, looks Johns deep in the eye and growls low and deep, "A man like that is not one of mine. _Never. Will. Be._ " He slides his goggles back down.

The silence draws out until Johns says, "It's not over between us."

"Oh, we'll meet again," Riddick agrees. Johns rises, pays, and strides through the door. 

_And on that day, I'll tell you all the things you never knew about your son, all his tastes and predilections. Did you know we scratched each other's itches more than once back in the day? And I'm not the first or the last man that William Johns took on in the backrooms and the gloryholes._ Riddick knows in his heart of hearts that Boss Johns will hate hearing that. Hate it as much as he can hate anything. But it won't destroy him. He's too smart for that, got too much spine for that.

Riddick rises, leaves behind a credit chit for coffee and tip and steps out into the night.

Nothing comes at him, though the rain shows no sign of slackening.

As he heads for the port in search of a ship headed for the core, Riddick laughs to himself about the fact that for the first time in a long time, he's had a night of pouring rain that didn't end in complete shit.

~oo(0)oo~

He hitches and grifts across the backways of the core. People from the core worlds don't like to think of their oh so civilized and mechanized worlds as having backwaters, back channels, and byways.

The reality, however, is that there is so much for the various trackers to track, that they pop up anyway: agencies who don't talk to each other … because they don't realize they should; maintenance teams who think that the other team has that sector; bureaucrats so busy fighting each other about who has jurisdiction that none of them have anything. All of it hidden in plain sight.

It's the middle of the night when the bucket of bolts Riddick's crewing on as the handyman docks in Quintessa.

Half a klick from the port, and he's striding through a neighborhood he's seen a thousand times before. Industrial. Decayed. Ripe for "urban renewal" or "gentrification" or whatever spin the Quintessans put on it. He strides down the block, all but radiating "do not touch me" when he sees two women approaching him. They're not whores because no pimp with a lick of sense would let his stock strut here -- the street to do that is 3 long blocks to the left. As they get closer, he can also see that they're not dressed the way a woman who lives down here, getting home to one of the few apartment blocks after a long shift, would be. Their clothes, though simple, are a little too new, nice, and neat for that.

Two strides later and his eyes pick out their identities: Aereon and _Shirah_.

Riddick clenches his teeth and screws his eyes shut. But only for a moment. Denying reality doesn't change it; life has taught him that all too well. He doesn't get the luxury of indulging in emotions such as the pain of betrayal. He just gets to push through, move on, and keep going.

When she's close enough to not have to yell, Aereon calls to him, "I decided it was better if we found you before you found us."

Riddick says nothing in response, just keeps his measured pace, clamps down tightly on his rage, torn by the fact that this close to Shirah, he can feel something in him resonating with her, and it gets stronger with every pace.

When he finally stands before them, he's a maelstrom of emotion on the inside, and using every lick of his will and training to show none of it. He can see (and feel, in a way) the same struggle in Shirah, though it only shows in the pulse hammering away in her throat.

Aereon studies him in that way of hers, reserved and measuring, before saying, "We have a great deal to talk about. Before you bite her head off, let's begin with the fact that Shirah is a hybrid, the half elemental daughter of an Alpha Female Furyan."

It all makes sense, and it still doesn't ease the sting of Shirah's betrayal. Elemental plans. Schemes within schemes.

Aereon gestures back the way they came. "You've had a very long night. Let's go --"

"You've got some stone ones, Aereon, asking me to go anyplace with you, after the shit you just laid on me. And you've got some real nerve bringing _her_ ," Riddick spits the word, "with you." He doesn't dare look at Shirah, his rage might boil over if he did.

Aereon's voice is almost kind, almost grandmotherly, as she says, "How do you think we found you first? Shirah has a bond with you that no one else in the cosmos shares."

 _And of course they found a way to leverage that,_ he thinks. He counts silently to 3 before he asks, "Where are we going?"

"My quarters, of course," Aereon replies.

Riddick mulls that over. "It says a lot about you, you know, that you don't have a home, but quarters."

Aereon pauses. "Indeed it does." With that she's heading purposefully towards a small cruiser in the distance.

~oo(0)oo~

It's beyond cramped in the vehicle. Then again, given that Aereon's an aesthetic, and rarely has company, it makes sense that her personal vehicle is small and no-frills.

Aereon guides them sedately through the streets, and while the neighborhoods get "better" and less industrial looking, there's still a sameness to them that gnaws at Riddick. Here the streets are neatly gridded, and the blocks have octagonal edges, not right angles -- to let in more sunlight he supposes -- but he still feels as if he's gliding through slot canyons, and though he knows that Quintessa has proper drainage systems, a part of him dreads hearing a distant crack of thunder, the kind that heralds an oncoming downpour.

It's so well lit that even with the tinted windows in Aereon's cruiser, Riddick doesn't want to take his goggles off, and he knows that if he looks up at the night sky he'll see an endless wash of darkness, lit only by Quintessa's moons.

(At Dom's compound, at least, a person doesn't have to go more than a few kilometers to start seeing the stars in the heavens, or find an empty lot. A day's run beyond that and a man can be alone with only the sounds of the world around him and a sky full of stars.)

"I look at these large mega cities," he says to no one in particular, "and I wonder if the people in them are as empty as the cities they build? Or do their cities make them empty?"

"You haven't seen all of Quintessa," Aereon replies. "We chose, centuries ago, to build very densely, and leave large parts of our world untouched. And even here, there are many gardens and parks."

Aereon lives in a large dormitory filled with others from her order. She calls it a dormitory, but it doesn't look like any dorm Riddick's ever seen. It's all done up in the colors of the first hints of the coming sunrise, and full of vaulted ceilings, skylights, and open arched windows … all to let light and air in.

As he expected, her quarters are tiny, but pin-neat, and though spare, they are not spartan. Her couch, chairs, and table are well made, but worn and comfortable. On the tiny patio, the jasmine blossoms and its scent fills the air. Water burbles from a small fountain tucked in a nook.

Beneath it all, he can smell her scent everywhere.

It doesn't feel (or smell) like any place he'd ever call home, but it's not institutional, either.

"It's late, or rather, early, and we're all tired." Aereon opens a small closet and hands him a blanket and a pillow.

~oo(0)oo~

Aereon's floor is tile, and her couch is a handspan too short for him to stretch out. 

Riddick's spent worse nights.

That knowledge doesn't do much for the crick in his neck come morning.

Aereon serves fresh bread, melon, and some hard boiled eggs for breakfast. "We could eat with the others of my order, but I fear that would be a bit too … much for them. You're not like most guests we have -- you stir things up simply by walking into a room."

He laughs at that.

~oo(0)oo~

Aereon finds him a pair of light grey robes to wear for his visit to the temple. It's unsettling to have clothes that don't fit him like a second skin. Oh, he's worn wraps, throws, and tunics over his clothes, but this is loose all over, and he wonders how people stand it. It's too free. It feels lazy and sloppy somehow.

The temple is a massive building, cream colored stone and rose-gold glass, and it's decorated without being ornate or overdone.

Taking him by the arm, Aereon gently but firmly guides him through a maze of corridors, nattering away all the while about the history of the temple and the work of her order. It doesn't stop Riddick from counting the turns, finding some landmarks, and making a rhyme about their route in his head so he can remember the paths they're taking. 

(Doing so has saved his life more than once in the slams.)

Aereon ranks a small private office in the temple's archives, as well as unrestricted access to all the records about Furya, Furyans, and Riddick. He senses that she's not happy about sharing secrets -- and not just because she can be disciplined for her actions -- but, at the same time, he can see the calculations in her faded blue eyes as she decides it better for him to know _all_ of the truth. Consequences be damned.

~oo(0)oo~

Twelve hours later, Riddick's both exhausted and furious. Furious at the Elementals for their actions … or strategic lack thereof that lead to the Furyan Genocide. At the same time he's also furious with the leaders of Furya, for failing to see the dangers that their actions posed, for failing to think about the problems inherent in the systematic breeding of their race, their ideas about racial purity, and for their arrogance in their dealings with other worlds. It doesn't take a genius to see that the last rulers of Furya were tyrants with dreams of empire.

Worst of all, it means he can't entirely blame the Elementals. They were right about Furya, unchecked, posing a huge threat to the stability of the galaxy.

It's just that the Elementals unleashed something _so_ much worse by underestimating the Necromongers.

_Shit. If two races ever deserved each other, it's the Necromongers and the Elementals. And there I was … cleaning up the fucking mess that they made. Such a neat solution. They must have loved it._

After a short breather, Aereon shows him one last thing about Alpha Furyans and the history of Furya. Something with such sketchy documentation, it's almost a myth. 

Something that causes his heart to skitter wildly in his chest before he's able to get it under control.

_Who else knows this? Who else has put it together?_

He laughs inside. Because, honestly, outside of a few archivists and academics, who gives a shit about the Furyans? They're a dead race, all past, no future.

And then Aereon makes him an offer. This is the only thing she can do for him, and it's not without considerable cost to her, given that she's dedicated her life to knowledge and the truth. He sees it in her eyes. 

And … it's an act of _something_ to make amends for what the Elementals have done, as well as something to thank him for ridding the 'verse of the Necromongers as anything other than a fringe cult of fanatics.

He accepts. 

~oo(0)oo~

"Shirah _needs_ to talk to you, Riddick," Aereon says, a gentle hand on his arm as they stroll through one of the gardens after dinner. It's twilight, though to his eyes, it might as well be high noon. She leads him to a small grotto, a vine covered arbor with a burbling fountain. He supposes it's meant to be soothing, but his mind doesn't work that way. He's glad the noise of the fountain will make casual eavesdropping hard. He breathes deeply and smells and tastes the moisture in the air and the green of the vines overhead, the damp paving stones, and the minerally cement of the cool bench. It's dark enough that he can take his goggles off.

Aereon smiles over her shoulder at him as she moves to the head of the path. Shirah slips past her and takes the bench opposite of him.

After a short silence, she says, "I want to have children."

Riddick shrugs. "No shortage of good looking men on this planet." The truth. Because some of the men he passed this morning on his way to the archives were damn fine on the eyes.

"Furyan children," she clarifies.

He laughs. "Good luck with that. I'm done with being the hands on the knife, and I'm not going to start being a prize stud bull."

"I don't want the last of Furya to vanish!" she hisses, desperation edging her voice. "How can you --"

"No." He clenches his fist and he pins her with the glare in his eyes, causing her to gasp and shrink back. "The Elementals caused the destruction of our people and I'm not going to play along because they've had a change of hea -- because they changed their minds." He'd almost said, 'change of heart' but the Elementals had precious little of that. Taking a deep breath he continues, "Besides, you're a half-breed. All you'll get is hybrids." _Which you know well enough the Furyans exterminated at every chance in their efforts to keep the race pure._

Her misery wells up in her eyes. "Better something than nothing."

For some reason, _this_ is her dream, and as much as a part of Riddick wants people, wants to belong? Not. Like. This. Finally, he says, "Alright, Shirah, there's a ship out there, somewheres, " he gestures overhead, "called the Kublai Khan. Used to belong to a real piece of work named Antonia Chillingsworth. I left it derelict near the M-334/G system a few years back. You _might_ find who you're looking for on it, still locked in stasis." _He's on display in the trophy room, The Killer of Men, but I'll let you decide for yourself, if you find him._

_(Of course, he might kill on you racial principles.)_

She nods.

"I think a few of the planets in that system are habitable. One of them might do for a new Furya." _And one of them becomes a living hell when the sun sets. Choose wisely._

He stands and walks to Aereon, Shirah trailing behind. "How fast do I need to be to escape the mercs coming for me?"

Aereon looks a little wounded at that. "Mr. Riddick, you are wanted for no crimes on Quintessa."

"You slipped in under the radar," Shirah chimes in. "Nobody knows you're here. That's also the best way to leave." She swallows hard. "If you'll let me in, I can guide you out of the core, the same way I guided you with the Necromongers."

"Don't," Riddick replies, but not harshly. "I'll take my chances." He leans in close and hisses into her ear, "And if you have a lick of sense, you'll stop being their meat puppet. You'll leave this planet the same ways I do and never look back."

~oo(0)oo~

Once again, Riddick swaggers into DT's on the night of the Harvest Moon, about 30 minutes before closing. Odetta flashes him a grin. He laughs and tells her she rocks a mean eye-patch. _Damn right she does -- the optics on that one are tip-top._

"You know that's a bear-cat cub in your front pocket, right?" Dom says as Riddick slides in next to him. He also pushes a basket of barely touched hot-wings over, and Riddick digs in with one hand while using the other to unsnap the flap of his pocket. He pulls the squeaky, sleepy cub out and sets it on the table, idly skritching it behind the ears, making it trill.

"Found her mother and all of her siblings dead in a landslide," he explains.

"That's kind of you, but it's _still_ a bear-cat," Dom replies. "Large. Meateater. Vicious temper."

Riddick grins at him. "I got a way with animals like this. You'll see."

Dom takes a long drink of his Corona. "Oh, I will?"

Riddick gestures at the cub, now curiously sniffing at the hot wings. "Well, now that I got a little mouth to feed, I plan on sticking around for at least the next standard cycle. By that time, she'll be old enough for travel. Also, she's a runt. She's not going to get that big."

"What about uninvited company?" Dom takes a wing from the basket, carefully strips the skin off, and puts the meat in front of the cub who snarfs it down and licks her chops.

Riddick shrugs. "I took advantage of a favor I was owed. She edited a few records for me. It's going to be a while before people start sniffing again." Tiasera hands him a cold beer just in time to put out the fire in his mouth before it becomes an inferno.

Dom laughs and shakes his head. "I knew a hacker once. Rescued her from some terrorists and she returned the favor."

Riddick tucks his cub back in his shirt pocket. She's still licking her chops, but her drooping eyes say she's ready to settle back down. "Well, in my case, it wasn't your garden variety terrorists," _just your massive, well-armed empire of religious fanatics_ , "but our updated records are spreading out into the universe, and it's going to take a while for that to get caught and fixed unless we get bad luck. She altered our DNA profiles and tweaked your official pictures a little. The mercs will be going in circles until they figure out something's not right, and then they'll have to fix it." 

Dom takes another drink and points with the bottle neck at the lump in Riddick's pocket. "That thing got a name?"

He almost says, "Not yet," but inspiration strikes and Riddick grins evilly. "Dame Vaako."

~oo(0)oo~

"You might not want to sleep in your usual perch tonight," Dom says as his speeder coasts up to the compound. "I'm not a pet person, but I'd hate it if little Dame Vaako there ended up as spot on the garage floor."

Tiasera sets him up on the couch, and lines a small box with soft towels for Dame Vaako. She also puts down a bowl of water and scoops some dirt from the yard into a large baking pan.

"Is she housebroken?" She tickles under Dame Vaako's chin, causing her to chitter in pleasure.

"She's never pooped on me, if that's what you're asking."

Tiasera just rolls her eyes. "Well, if she makes a mess on the floor, you get to clean it up."

~oo(0)oo~

Dame Vaako wanders off in the night, giving Riddick a few moments of panic when he wakes up until Dom comes downstairs about a minute later with her perched on his shoulder.

"Looks like you're approved," Riddick says.

"I could do without the claws," Dom replies as he carefully pulls a protesting Dame Vaako down and hands her over. Riddick can see (and smell) more than one pinprick of blood staining Dom's shirt.

"Well, in a few months she'll be too big --" Riddick yelps as she bites down on his finger. "And she'll be done teething too."

Dom crosses his arms and studies them for a moment. "And what happens when she's as big as a cycle and weighs as much as the both of us?"

Riddick skritches his best girl and replies, "Well, it will be a bad day for anybody who tries jumping over your wall."

Dom nods thoughtfully at that. "I got something to show you after breakfast."

_And I got something to tell you too._

~oo(0)oo~

"So, loose ends are tied off." Dom says after Riddick demolishes his second plate of eggs scrambled with cheddar and hot peppers. He almost feels a little guilty about the way he tucked in, because Dom's still working on his first serving, but as soon as the first bite hit his mouth, the weeks of hard travel caught up with Riddick and his body demanded fuel. In the corner, Dame Vaako's happily licking the remnants of the plain scrambled eggs Tiasera fixed for her.

"For now," Riddick says, downing a generous gulp of coffee. "I'd like to say for good, but you know how it is."

Dom laughs. "Something always shakes loose. Five hundred years later, and I'm still tying up mine." He finishes his coffee. "C'mon."

Riddick scoops Dame Vaako up on his way to following Dom out the door. "We gotta start teaching you, little lady."

Dom shakes his head as he strides towards the garage, and says, "Good luck with that. In my experience the hellcats train _you_." 

~oo(0)oo~

Without ceremony Dom opens the inner room of the garage. The ancient Toyota Supra is complete. It gleams a brilliant red-orange. Riddick walks around it in appreciation.

"Back in the day," Dom says, wiping a soft cloth over some imaginary smudge on the hood, "we would have decorated it with decals and stickers -- the one Brian and I worked on had a guy with a javelin -- but 'AEM' and "Eurolite" don't mean a damn thing anymore."

"There's this one," Riddick points to a small decal for Toretto Precision Tuning.

Dom smiles. "Hop in, let's go for a ride."

Riddick tucks Dame Vaako into the back seat and slides into the passenger side; it's so low he feels like he's almost sitting on the ground. Two seconds later he has a lap full of bear-cat, and then she climbs down to snuggle against his feet. Dom chuckles and starts the engine. It's not the low and throaty rumble of the Beast, it's smoother, silkier. As primitive as it is, this car is more about precision than brute force. Despite the difference, Riddick has no doubt this machine has power to spare. The Beast sledgehammers its way to 10 seconds, but this … this Supra is a stilletto. Riddick likes it a lot. It reminds him of a ripwing.

As soon as they emerge into the sunlight, Riddick asks, "Is this also a 10 second car?"

Dom grins with pride. "The first time Brian and I took our Supra out, we got next to this asshole in a Ferrari --" he glances over to Riddick and clarifies, "think of the most expensive and fastest stock speeder you know. We smoked his ass. When I get this car completely dialed in, it's going to run _nines_." A moment later he adds, "But today, we're just going to go around the block." He takes Riddick's hand and guides it to the gear selector in the center console. "Here, when I tell you to, just pull straight down into the next gear."

Riddick can feel just the faintest of vibrations through the knob at the top of the shaft. He knows it's a machine, but it almost feels alive.

"Yeah, I know that there are ultra-modern transmissions that shift faster and better than any man, but back in 1994, that wasn't the case." Dom increases the speed of the vehicle and the engine revs, shifting from silk to a sharp-edged buzzsaw snarl, "Now." 

Riddick pulls the shaft into the next position.

Dom glances over at him. "A stick shift makes a driver one with the car like nothing else can."

Riddick cups his hand around the shifter, liking the way it feels in his hand. He wonders if Dom will teach him to drive the Supra. He also wonders what kind of pilot Dom would make.

"So, you got something you want to say?"

Riddick thinks about it for a moment. "We should get back to the garage first."

"You're going to lay something heavy on me."

"Heavy and light. And you'll know what I mean when you hear it."

~oo(0)oo~

After Dom kills the engine, Riddick leaves the soundly sleeping Dame Vaako in the passenger footwell and steps out and studies the pictures on the wall. "What we just did, when I shifted the Supra … was that something your dad did with you when you were young?"

"Yeah …." Dom's voice trails off. He's still half out of the vehicle.

"Good. How much do you know about genetics?"

"Enough…? The basics."

Riddick turns away from the wall to face him. "You're my ancestor. I'm your direct male-line descendant."

"Are you fucking with me?" Dom hisses from over the roof of the Supra.

Riddick looks him dead in the eye. "Absolutely not."

Dom rounds the front of the vehicle. " _How_? How do you know --"

"I'm one of the last living Furyans from the planet Furya. There's … I think three of us left, and one of them's a half-breed."

"What happened? Did a star blow up or did a comet crash into --"

"Genocide." Riddick bites the word off, and Dom's mouth turns into a hard, angry line. "The Furyans -- there's no good way to say this -- _bred themselves_ to be peak humans. They say it started because Furya was a hard world and only the strong survived. But after they mastered their environment, Furyans started making plans for domination and war, and they made a lot of enemies. So … they were hunted down and exterminated before they could become a threat.

"Some Furyans were Alphas. Less than 10%. Eyes like mine that can see if there's even a hint of light. Stronger and faster than other Furyans. Enhanced smell, hearing, touch, and taste. Able to endure extremes of temperature. Faster healing, strong immune system. Can even last for a few minutes in space. Other gifts, too. Basically, we're hard to kill." _Now's not the time to get into psychic links, the Fortelling, or the Fury of the Race._

Dom nods slowly at this.

"They don't know why some became Alphas," Riddick continues. "Alpha parents didn't always guarantee Alpha children. But they do know one thing for certain: every single Alpha Male Furyan had the same Y chromosome, because they all descended through what they called the 'Line of the Dominus,' descended from one of three brothers. Identical triplets, if the legends are true."

The light shifts in Dom's eyes. Riddick can see him mentally slotting the pieces together. He takes a deep breath and continues, "The legends say that the three sons were born on Earth and left during the early days of exploration and deep space travel. Scientists say that their unique Y chromosome is about 500 years old and is a spontaneous mutation, or something they inherited from their father, maybe even a grandfather, but not earlier than that, or more men would've inherited it, meaning it would show up in other populations on other planets.

"Only one other person in the known universe has this same Y chromosome." Riddick takes a deep breath and says, " _You_. And there is only one explanation for that."

Dom's knees buckle and he reaches for the wall to steady himself.

Riddick lays it out. "You are the legendary Dominus who founded the line of the Male Alpha Furyans."

Dom buries his head against the wall for a moment and when he looks up, eyes wet and glassy, Riddick sees a riot of emotions flicker across his face: grief, disbelief, hope, joy, and in the last instance a stunned acceptance. Before Riddick can react, Dom launches himself across the gap and pulls him into a rocking, bone-crushing hug.

"All my life," Riddick whispers fiercely in Dom's ear, as he clenches him back, just as tightly, "I had nothing and nobody." He can't believe the way he's shaking. "They killed my mother and strangled me with my umbilical cord before throwing me in a dumpster to die," Dom cries out at that, a choked, keening sound, "but, because I was an Alpha, I lived." He lets his arms fall.

Dom loosens his death grip and steps back, sucking in a huge, ragged gasp. "All this time," he can barely get the words out over the emotion, "all this time and I have _Familia_."

Riddick doesn't have a name for this crazy giddy jittery feeling racing through his body. He shakes with it and clenches his jaw against something that makes him want to laugh until he cries.

He's known this for weeks, but it wasn't real. Until now.

Dom staggers away and half sits, half collapses on a stool, shaking his head as he clutches the cross around his neck. "I … shit. Letty was _pregnant_. I wonder if she knew and was waiting to tell me, or did she only find out after I disappeared." He buries his head in his hands then looks up laughing. "I left her with three _boys_. Fuck." He whips around and heads to the wall, reaching out and gently stroking the pictures of himself with Brian. "Well, I know who loved and raised them like his own." He pauses. "This calls for a BBQ. We'll tell the gang that we're related -- they'll be happy to know. Tia knows how much it meant to me to find Fescue." He heads for the door and waits for Riddick so he can lock up.

Riddick reaches into the Supra and scoops up Dame Vaako, who squawks at him for disturbing her rest. _When I first found out who I was, what I was, I was so angry. Growing up, I needed somebody to guide me, to help me grow into being myself, to teach me how to be a good man. I had to figure that out for myself. And now that I know what the last Furyans were like, I know I wouldn't have gotten that from them._ "We got lucky, you little minx," he whispers in her ear, "You have no idea how lucky we got. But I do. And now I'm going learn how to be an even better man. We're still not going to get civilized … much."

"What did you say?" Dom asks, impatiently waiting at the door.

"Only that you need a hearing aid, old man." Riddick grumbles back.

Dom lifts an eyebrow and the expression in his eyes tells Riddick that _oh yeah, it's on_.

Riddick wouldn't want it any other way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The references to Bitcoin are a bit of humor on my part. Yes, it would be crazy and yet make sense that 500 years from now, Bitcoin (instead of the SF generic writer fallback "credits") be the intergalactic standard.
> 
> That said, it's not an endorsement of Bitcoin as an investment.


End file.
